Hello GIS Studio followers! Wordpress tells me there are 200 of you? Seriously? Well let’s put that power to work.
Lets Talk
I am creating a new half day workshop designed to cover intermediate python topics – as they relate to GIS tasks.
Here’s an outline of the topics so far
- Setting up a code template with built in tools to get you up and coding faster
- A peek inside a more powerful IDE editor and why you would want to use it.
- Using GIT – what is it (revision control software) and how to set yours up
- A look behind the scenes at task automation with Python – what powers a local government every evening for GIS cleanup
- Advanced ODBC / arcpy data access module connection strings
- How to use ST_Geometry in your queries to run spatial queries without ArcMap
- Zipping files in python
- Logging to a text file or SQL database
What is missing? What would you all like to get out of an intermediate class?
It will be lecture format half day – unless we generate a long list and then maybe we will shoot for an all day class!
The GIS Studio 
Perhaps accessing the Geometry of a feature, what are the X,Y coordinates of a point, or the verts or a line/polygon. Also, what coordinate system is this data in? Another thing I’d like to see would be a quick loop through a dataset, or entire ArcSDE database connection that would access the MetaData and drop it into a .txt file, or excel. I think you might be covering this, or parts of it already, but I’m very excited to see some of the other tool described as I dabble in Python when I can.
Thanks! I can definitely touch on getting at the x,y. The metadata loop is interesting. I’ll see if I can get to that too! Great ideas!
Excellent! I have a bunch of other ideas on the tip of my brain right now, but I think you’ll cover a bunch of them with the topics you propose. I really like your site and I’ve gotten some great code starting points from you in the past. I got the email link to this, but I didn’t see any more information on the format of the class. Will it be on-line, and live, or are you doing it i- person somewhere?
Please share all your ideas. I’d love to hear them. Thanks for the kind words too! This is in preparation for a half-day workshop at the next WAURISA hosted conference in May. Check http://www.waurisa.org for details.
Some ideas or suggestions into getting Tkinter GUI’s to function in ArcMap seessions. Since Python comes packaged with Tkinter, I find it most convienient to use as a interface; as with most interfaces once you have a template customising for different tasks is easy.
Thanks Rory! I haven’t used Tkinter at all! Something to look in to – thank you!
Hope this isn’t too out of place, but I’ve had a bit experience creating Tkinter applications and using them for GIS-related work. Maybe I could give some suggestions for GIS Studio’s workshop on this. Just need to know, Rory, was your question to make a Tkinter GUI pop up by clicking a button inside ArcMap (and what would be the purpose of this Tk GUI), or to make standalone Tk GUIs that lets you set the input of and run any desired arcpy Python script (sort of like running some custom toolbox outside of a ArcMap session)? If needed I could also make a post about it on my new help-reference website Python GIS Resources: http://pythongisresources.wordpress.com/
Its nice to know someone else out there is spendiing a bit of time with Tkinter and GIS. I have had a great deal of success running gis processes using ArcMap geoprocessing tools with stand alone applications running a Tkinter interface, but it is always good to get other peoples design styles (all in the aim of self improvement). There is not too much talk about Tkinter for ArcGis since it isnt (or so far as I am aware no great published way to do it) able to run a GUI inside an ArcMap session. I beleive it is a program loop problem. Anyhow I think this maybe why the subject is dropped quickly. I did come across and article a while back where some one had got it too work, but back then it was way over my head and I never followed it up, so I am hoping to generate some discussion on the matter for both arenas. Running as a internal dialog from a button and in stand alone applications. I would certainly attend the workshop, but unfortunately I am on the other side of the planet.
Sorry for the late reply. Ditto, Tkinter is just fun and even more fun to combine with GIS. I’ve mostly created standalone Tk apps, not embedded inside of the ArcGis interface. I think as you suggest that’s just a bit difficult and I would imagine it would require some tinkering with VB or whatever language controls the ArcGis GUI. As far as ideas for creating standalone TkApps I would be willing to discuss/share experiences on that somewhere, but not sure where would be the appropriate place/venue for such a discussion…
(For instance, relating to your template idea, it would be possible to make a Tk GUI that can provide a flexible interface for any script by asking the user to load a GIS-related Python script, and provided that that script has certain user input values to be filled along with a docstring description, Tk can build its interface based on that, with a separate input widget and description text for each input value, and a scrollbar in case the inputs are many.)